USA Dot Com is a blog covering politics and government from a conservative Christian perspective. Verne Strickland is a 50-year veteran of investigative journalism. This blog offers a take-no-prisoners style with a modicum of biting satire. Verne and his wife of 55 years, Durrene, live in Wilmington, NC.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

The Video Didn't Do It? Jay Carney says it did. Jay is wrong

Verne Strickland Blogmaster / September 15, 2012

The Video Didn’t Do It

It was bad enough, two years
ago, that Defense Secretary Robert Gates called fringe Florida pastor
Terry Jones to ask him not to burn copies of the Koran, or last week,
that chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey took his turn to
call Jones to ask him to stop publicizing a YouTube video, The Innocence
of Muslims.

But then on Friday, White House spokesman Jay Carney told
the world that the violent protests in Cairo and Ben­ghazi and elsewhere
were a “response not to United States policy, and not obviously the
administration or the American people,” but were “in response to a
video, a film we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting.” Carney
repeated the point for emphasis: “This is not a case of protests
directed at the United States at large or at U.S. policy, but in
response to a video that is offensive to Muslims.”

Getty Images

Carney’s
comments lie outside the range of plausible spin, even by Obama
administration standards, and if his bosses believe them—as we fear they
do—are simply delusional. But they are not without consequence. Nor are
Gates’s and Dempsey’s phone calls. They all send the message to
America’s enemies that if you kill our diplomats and lay siege to the
our embassies, the first move the American government will make is to
denounce . . . Americans. Our leaders apparently believe that the way
to protect Americans from extremists and terrorists abroad is to tell
other Americans to shut up.

What’s next? Where does it go from here? There are more than 300
million ways in which Americans expressing themselves might give offense at those who make it their business to be offended. Maybe it’s some
other film, maybe it’s a book or even just a tossed-off phrase that our
enemies might seize on to galvanize support for their causes.

Is the
White House going to put every American crank on speed-dial so it can
tell them to shut up whenever a mob gathers outside a U.S. embassy or
consulate?